Law and Art

In engaging with the full range of 'the arts', contributors to this volume consider the relationship between law, justice, the ethical and the aesthetic. Art continually informs the ethics of a legal theory concerned to address how theoretical abstractions and concrete oppressions overlook singularity and spontaneity. Indeed, the exercise of the legal role and the scholarly understanding of legal texts were classically defined as ars iuris - an art of law - which drew on the panoply of humanist disciplines, from philology to fine art. That tradition has fallen by the wayside, particularly in the wake of modernism. But approaching art in that way risks distorting the very inexpressibility to which art is attentive and responsive, whilst remaining a custodian of its mystery. The novelty and ambition of this book, then, is to elicit, in very different ways, styles and orientations, the importance of the relationship between law and art. What can law and art bring to one another, and what can their relationship tell us about how truth relates to power? The insights presented in this collection disturb and supplement conventional accounts of justice; inaugurating new possibilities for addressing the origin of violence in our world.

Oren Ben-Dor is a Reader in the Philosophy of Law at University of Southampton, UK. His writings explore the relationship between ontology and ethics and the implication this relationship has to the limit of critical legal and political thinking. He is the author of Constitutional Limits and the Public Sphere ( Hart Publishing 2000) and Thinking about Law: In Silence with Heidegger (Hart Publishing 2007)

Part One; Philosophical Reflections: Law between Ethics and Aesthetics: 1. Poietic "Justice": Art and the Measure of Mortality, Kryzstof Ziarek; 2. Repetition Or The Awnings of Justice, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos; 3. Judaism In The No Man's Land Between Law and EthicAriella Atzmon; 4. Seizing Truths: Art, Politics, Law; Igor Stramignoni 5. Like The Osprey to the Fish: Shakespeare and the Force of Law, Richard Wilson; 6. Agonic is not yet Demonic: at the be-ginning there will have be-come a de-cision, Oren Ben-Dor; 7. Nella Larsen's Feminist Aesthetics: On Curse, Law, and Laughter, Ewa Plonowska Ziarek; 8. I wish you well: Notes Towards an Aesthetics of Welfare, Adam Gearey; Part Two: When law meets Art: Creativity, Singularity and Performance, 9. The Torch of Art and the Sword of Law: Between Particularity and Universality, Zenon Bankowski and Maksymilian Del Mar; 10. The Play of Terror, Ian Ward;11. The poetic ocean in Mare Liberum, Stephanie Jones 12. Reading Law as Literature: Cases for Conversation, Robin Lister; 13. Copyright Activism as Art: Aesthetics, Ideology and Ethics, Jaime Stapleton; 14. Musical Performance, Natural Law and Interpretation,Thomas Irvine; Part Three: Law, Justice and the Image, 15. A Legal Phenomenology of Images,Costas Douzinas, 16. Flores quae faciunt coronam or The Flowers of Common Law, Peter Goodrich; 17. The Expressionless: Law, Ethics, and the Imagery of Suffering, Panu Minkkinen,18. Governor Arthur's Proclamation: Images of the Rule of Law, Desmond Manderson; Epilogue, Kenddel Geers, by any means necessary, 1995/ situation